4. Wherefore context?: the ontogenesis of context in the system and process of language [2001]

Ruqaiya Hasan† [+-]

Macquarie University

Ruqaiya Hasan, who died in 2015, was a professor of linguistics who taught and held visiting positions at various universities in England. Her last appointment was at Macquarie University, Australia, from where she retired as Emeritus Professor in 1994. Throughout her career she researched and published widely in the areas of verbal art, culture, context and text, text and texture, lexicogrammar and semantic variation.
Read her obituary here

Description

‘Wherefore context? The ontogenesis of meaning exchange’ (2001), the concluding chapter in this first section on Language in the context of life in society was first presented at the International Conference on Discourse Analysis at the University of Macau in October 1997. Unapologetically, Hasan begins by acknowledging that the paper ‘offers neither any technicalities that can be readily borrowed and quickly applied to the analysis of another text of one’s choosing, nor does it make an appeal to our moral sense of responsibility.’ Hoping instead to ‘enhance our understanding of the place of context in the system and process of language’, she puts forward a way of conceptualizing the category of context which rests on the principle that society, semiosis and the brain form ‘a trinity no one member of which can exist without the other two.’

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